AAMFP was released to "predominantly strong critical praise".
FG's hands-off approach allowed for great creative freedom on the part of TCR.
One idea that didn't make it into the game was a 3D electrical maze puzzle, which bore similarities to the movie Cube.
"Ripping out the heart of what makes Amnesia, Amnesia, was not the aim"
The enthusiastic response from the forum to the trailers and ARG helped fuel TCR's creativity, with one or two ideas from the forum actually being used in the final game.
The removal of the sanity system was a decision made at the very start of development.
The sanity system was to be replaced with an "infection system". Enemies would hurt Mandus by making him sick, causing visual distortion and vomiting, requiring him to find decontamination chambers to cure himself. Properly implementing the mechanic proved too difficult and it was dropped.
The HPL2 tools needed some updates to help with the workflow, one such update was the ability to place dynamic objects in-game, allowing for more accurate/natural placement.
There were originally many more voice overs in the script, but because of considerations in level design and player freedom most were relegated to notes instead. The script was therefore largely unchanged, just reconfigured.
Voice actors were not used to read the notes so that the player could interpret their tone and meaning on their own.
A sprint limit was used early on, which would cause Mandus to pant and slow down after running a certain distance. This was removed due to considerations in player freedom and the fact that it didn't add anything meaningful to the gameplay.
The inventory was removed because, according to TCR, having a separate static screen was detrimental to immersion.
Early alternatives to the inventory screen included a "quick access" bar at the bottom of the screen with an inventory that only housed vital items, such as keys.
There were only a few sections which actually made use of an inventory, so the decision was made to cut it completely.
FG were, according to TCR, too demanding in their milestone requests. The example given is the Cellar level; FG wanted a completed version of it before the game as a whole had been "grey-boxed", which led to problems later when the level needed to be altered again.
The lack of an early grey-boxing process for the entire game meant that, even late into development, many of the core mechanics hadn't been set in stone. This caused problems along the way which might have been caught earlier, including:
The severe reduction in the number of dynamic objects in the game's world was because the game's performance suffered hugely when these objects had their dynamic properties enabled (i.e. they could be picked up and thrown around).
TCR didn't have a detailed production schedule or any central documentation which kept track of bugs and internal milestones, which obviously led to problems down the line.
There was a slight breakdown in communication between FG and TCR, with contradictory feedback and misunderstandings happening between the teams, and with TCR not being firm enough in defending their design decisions.
TCR wanted to remove the mementos system that was present in The Dark Descent (i.e. when something important happens, you hear a scribbling sound and a note is entered into your journal) but FG insisted on its inclusion.
Many of the fixes and updates to levels were lost when communication broke down and FG were polishing and tweaking older versions of the levels. One example of this is the "blue fog" issue which was fixed before the game was released, and then reintroduced by accident through a lack of clear communication.
TCR wanted the game to be harder, both in terms of puzzles and enemy encounters, and FG wanted it to be less so. This led to the game's overall simplification compared to TDD.
The Tunnel levels were about 4 times bigger than they are in the final game, and they were originally so big to allow for more enemy encounters. FG disapproved of the levels' complexity and it was reduced in scope.
The extremely simple puzzle involving placing the cogs back into the machine was originally much more complex, with the cogs originally being at the other side of a body of water in which electric pigs hunted the player. Again, FG didn't approve.
That seemingly pointless ditch in the Bilge, the one where you can't get out until you knock a ladder free with a rock, was supposed to be a dumping place where you'd find yourself after getting "killed" by a Manpig. The game was supposed to have lots of this sort of thing - that is, areas from which you'd need to solve a small puzzle to escape after "dying" - but the number of enemy encounters was reduced too much for it to be worth while.
Enemy encounters were intended to be less forgiving and more plentiful, but FG disapproved.
A mistake made early in the game was "teaching" the player that they won't be in real danger from enemies when solving a puzzle (i.e. when filling the gas can while the Manpig bangs the door).
One enemy which was considered for inclusion was only visible to Mandus in his peripheral vision.
TCR were as confused by the decision to give PewDiePie a pre-release copy as everyone else was.
The article seems to lay at least 51% of the "blame" for the game's problems at FG's door. I don't know if that was Peter's intention, but the general thrust of the article, at least in the "what went wrong" part, seems to be that TCR had a super-awesome game in mind but FG didn't let them make it, for whatever reason.
In one breath the writer praises the amount of creative freedom FG gave to TCR, and in another he claims that FG were too strict and were the cause of most of the issues the critics were most vocal about. It's the first time I've ever heard of anyone from the TCR side of things (as Pete Howell is) comment on the relationship with FG in a negative way, and that this article is written over 9 months after the fact makes me wonder about the malleability of people's memories.
Did Peter Howell and Dan Pinchbeck actually work together on this project?
Peter Howell Wrote:"The disagreements between TCR and FG regarding how challenging the game should be, both in terms of enemy encounters and in terms of puzzle-solving, resulted in the difficulty of the final game being much too easy."
"[...] unlike in the final game, players were consistently hunted in this area [the Tunnels level] by enemies, combining enemy threats with cognitive puzzle solving. The size and complexity of this area were eventually reduced drastically as the initial version did not meet FG's approval."
"[...] FG reverting enemy encounters back to a state resembling much closer the behavior of The Dark Descent with enemies despawning if they successfully kill a player. This dramatically reduced both the difficulty of these encounters and the anxiety and fear that should have accompanied them."
"[...] some of the game's puzzle scenarios suffered from being simplified in order to meet FG's requests."
versus
Dan Pinchbeck Wrote:"It's an easier game. There's no question about it. When we first started making it, it started off in this status where it was much more difficult. The puzzles were more obtuse, there were more enemies. There were maze sections in there originally."
So why scale it back? It's a complicated process of decisions that led to this conclusion, but the short answer is that Pinchbeck's main priority was for players to actually finish the game, something most didn't with its predecessor. "We really wanted to tell a story in A Machine For Pigs."
"The immediate problem is that if you really want to tell a complete story, and you want to get as many people through to the end of that story, then there's a massive contradiction. Because every time you do something that is really, really terrifying you lose a bunch of players."
"We definitely made the decision that we wanted as many players as possible to make it to the end of this game, and if you make that decision your goal, then it does radiate backwards about the decisions you make about the difficulty of different sections of it."
I have said in the "A Machine for Pigs How should it been" I wish that The Chinese Room will remake/re-release/redone AMFP but that will probably will never happen. We can only dream how the original version will like...
Did Peter Howell and Dan Pinchbeck actually work together on this project?
[...]
There's an epidemic of short memories over at TCR:
Before release:
Dan Wrote:"We want this game to be absolutely skin-crawlingly, heart-shatteringly, and nerve-jarringly terrifying -- that's the target. Everything is geared around that. Just turning people to complete ice and making them have complete meltdowns"
Dan Wrote:"The thing is, if we don't frighten people as much as the original, then we've failed."
Dan Wrote:"It has to be absolutely, bone-shatteringly, terrifying. That was the key thing, Thomas said “If we don’t get as many Youtube videos of people spazzing out, then we haven’t done our job.”"
After release:
Dan Wrote:@C418:
@ChineseRoom I like the new Amnesia because it feels more like a game than its predecessor. But I got much less creeped out as a result
@ChineseRoom
@C418 yes, we wanted people to finish the game so had different priorities to the first. Glad you liked it
Jess Wrote:A lot of people have said to us, so, you're trying to follow up on what's been called the scariest game ever made, in The Dark Descent, how do you do that? and Dan and I were talking about it yesterday, and he said "actually, I didn't want to make it as scary"...
(05-24-2014, 10:55 AM)Chieftain1 Wrote: I have said in the "A Machine for Pigs How should it been" I wish that The Chinese Room will remake/re-release/redone AMFP but that will probably will never happen. We can only dream how the original version will like...
They don't seem adverse to the idea of remakes (Dear Esther is getting its second full remake as I write this), so it's possible!
(05-24-2014, 10:55 AM)Chieftain1 Wrote: I have said in the "A Machine for Pigs How should it been" I wish that The Chinese Room will remake/re-release/redone AMFP but that will probably will never happen. We can only dream how the original version will like...
They don't seem adverse to the idea of remakes (Dear Esther is getting its second full remake as I write this), so it's possible!
It will be great if they did it but I don't think The Chinese Room want Remake company as one of their many labels e.g "Walking simulator company" and "Anti-Gamers" but I think AMFP is more remake worthy than Dear Esther Remake 2: Dance Esther Dance.
(05-25-2014, 03:54 PM)nofsky Wrote: This guy seems like a bit of an asshole, he can't even get the country FG is located in right. Danish?!
Haha, nicely spotted! I can't believe I didn't notice that. I think I didn't read the introduction properly, I jumped right into the juice of the article.
At a later part, Peter does say "and FG based in Sweden". Maybe he thinks that all Scandinavians are Danish? XD
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Post-mortem by Peter Howell
